A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left.
Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

On such a low regional swing the Tories would miss prime targets like Bradford West (number 60 on their UK hitlist on new boundaries), Halifax (no.72) and Keighley (no.92), Dewsbury (no.96) , Pudsey (no.98) and Elmet & Rothwell (no.106) and even ultramarginal Colne Valley and Calder Valley might stay Labour.

The LDs would lose Leeds NW (though not clear whether to Lab or Con) and the new York Outer (to Con).

7 Comments:

The Yorkshire area also produce a decent set of local elections for Labour last year. So this poll figures are plausible. In 2006 locals the tories didn't do better than in 2004 locals.

It would be interesting to see if the situation is similar in North West...another North area with a lot of marginals (18 Lab seats with less than 15% majority over the tories). If the tories can't make much inroads also there, they probably just can hope in a hung parliament (unless they start to overtune many safish Labour seats in the South and in the Midlands)

As a Yorkshire member, this ring true to me although I'd be cautious about reading too much into a single poll. However, I think I have seen regional splits for some other polls and they have all shown similar trends.

The only concern I would have is about the growth in support shown for 'other parties'. I don't believe that they will actually poll at this level in a General Election, and their final destination will be critically important to the outcome.

As the agent in Calder Valley in 2005, I hope Luke's comment about that seat is right. My gut feeling is that we are doing slightly better there at the moment than we were in 2003-04, and we were certainly damaged in 2005 by Iraq.

In Halifax we are about to face a local byelection defending a marginal Labour seat against the BNP, in a ward where the Tories were a respectable third, so it will be interesting to see how this reflects those trends. (Help welcomed!)

"The only concern I would have is about the growth in support shown for 'other parties'"

Considering the area, there's the chance that the growth of "others" is a growth of BNP.

"I don't believe that they will actually poll at this level in a General Election, and their final destination will be critically important to the outcome"

yes. And I think that not all fringe parties will stand in all Yorkshire seats. So maybe for ex there can be a couple of Halifax residents who say that they'll vote Green when interviewed, but then they can find a ballot paper without the Greens. So they can't obviously vote for them.

Although there's undoubtedly a growth in activism on the part of the BNP up here, there's not much evidence of a growth of support. It would be interesting to see 'others' broken down. I think Tim's right that there are people who might say BNP to a poll but would vote differently come a General Election. But in the few places where they've had a local impact, it's been as much to do with the poor turnout of other parties in a particular ward than much increase for them. I think what the 'other' might represent is a certain growing anti-politics position, and all manner of parties and groupings could be being mentioned.

Luke, glad to see your blog for the first time, very impressive. Good luck with it, and your selection.

It may interest you to know that Martin Baxter http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/index.html?conlist_t_z.html is putting York Outer down as a Labour GAIN. While this is not necessarily solid (none of the notional predictions seem to have too much reliability here), I think it´s clear that this seat could really go to anyone.

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About Me

Labour Party activist since 1988 - firmly on the moderate wing of the party. Member of Labour’s NEC 2010-2012. National Secretary of Labour Students 1995-6. Parliamentary candidate for Aldershot (2001) and Castle Point (2005). Hackney Councillor (Chatham Ward) 2002-2014, Labour Group Chief Whip 2002-09, Chair of Health Scrutiny 2010-2014. Supporter of Europe, NATO/nuclear deterrence, Israel, electoral reform. Guardian reader. Dad. Oxford resident. Unite union member. Employment history as a Labour Party Organiser, Local Government Political Assistant, Director at a Public Affairs company. All views expressed in a personal capacity. The rest will become evident from reading the blog.